When Zee was a child, her neighbor and best friend Leila was like an older sister to her. They did absolutely everything together, and Zee relied heavily on Leila throughout her early teens because she was very timid, and was still coping with the disappearance of her mother.
One weekend they were minding the grass pokemon ranch Leila’s aunt and uncle owned while they were away for a conference. A fire broke out amongst the buildings. Leila didn’t survive.
The truth is Zee had nothing to do with it, but she was the only survivor. She owned an aggressive dragon type and had a reputation for delinquency, the fire had no clear cause, and the family and friends were desperate to find something or someone to blame. Zee was even arrested under suspicion of arson, but the charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence. Despite this, the people around her insisted for years it was her fault Leila was gone, and through a combination of the trauma, the flaws of human memory, and the constant reassurance that it was her fault, Zee can’t clearly recall was actually happened that night. Now, she fully believes she caused Leila’s death.
ID: a digital illustration of a faceless angel made out of glowing light with fiery wings bending his arm over his head, so that his flaming sword rests across his shoulder. He has breasts, a navel and belly button, and hairy armpits. He is holding a snake is his other hand, which has wrapped itself around its torso and placed its head on his shoulder, hissing at the audience. It has two sharp fangs. Behind the angel is the wrecked garden of Eden. The tree of knowledge has been split down the middle, and is smouldering with fire, releasing huge plumes of smoke. The dismembered and charred remains of Adam and Eve are in the background on the grass. Adam’s hips and legs, with one cut off at the knee, are on the left side, and his torso is face down on the right, with a headless Eve behind him. The sky is dark blue, with a huge floating eye in the centre of the sky. ED.
A new episode of the disquiet library podcast has been uploaded.
A transcript of the story has been included below the break for those who do not wish to listen but prefer to read.
Good evening friends enemies and unacquainted strangers. I Welcome you to the Disquiet Library. I am the curator and these listless halls house many stories and artworks.
This evening I bring you a story and flier from the collections. Static copies of this evenings artwork have been linked in the description box or description card wherever you found our audio recordings. The flier has no objectionable material however the story depicts death, drug abuse, hallucinations, and immolation so if any of those would cause undue mental strain.please feel free to skip this story and peruse the other works the library has to offer. But with that let's begin.
Dr. Crane Grayham stood at the front of the lecture hall. Elegant curving ribs of bone meeting up overhead to form the vast hall encompassing the lecture stage as well as the few hundred vacant faces of students listening to their lecture.
"Carcosa the sunken city. A marvelous place where treasures and art secrets of the universe existed if only one could find Carcosa. It was a powerful legend that influenced many cultures throughout history."
Crane handed a photo printed on stiff translucent cartilage to the projection beast. It's bio-luminescent organs displayed the image of cave pictographs and temple murals in a sickly blue-green glow across the back wall of the lecture hall. The pictures and murals depicted variations of an underground city of shining domes illuminated by two suns. The surface dwellers were depicted as setting up excavations and searching caves to approach Carcosa.
"Many cultures told the story and believed it to be a real place searching for it in the shifting sands."
Crane handed the projection beast another card of cartilage. And watched the image shift to ruins of a monastery.
"Some people interpreted Carcosa not as a physical location but more as a state of being, and that to find Carcosa was to unlock the truths of the universe within one's self."
Crane gestured with their long bone pointer. Towards the crumbling murals that showed a shining city being embedded in the body of a thinking person.
"Modern research has determined that the legend of Carcosa comes from an ancient myth spread by verbal tradition through trade routes and nomadic peoples. We now Know Carcosa to be a lie, but we can still see that even just the people's belief is enough to lend it some substance and have real impacts on the world. The impacts of this are important to understand, but i have run over time enough already and i can pick up next session." Crane tapped on the projection beast which happily spit back up the photos and started hopping off to its den at the side of the podium. The great basins of fireworms above were uncovered from Crane tugging sharply on a signal nerve. Soon the vast tiered hall was illuminated with brilliant red-orange light. "And remember your essays are due this evening. Please get them to my office before I leave today." There was an audible sigh of discomfort from several students as all packed and made ready to go.
Crane walked over to the lectern and rested their hand on its cold smooth crown while they took a swig from their water flask. And started packing away the photo slides from the lecture.
"Are you professor Grayham? Have you approved this?" Crane slowly turned around to address the voice.
"That is I" The figure was not one of their students. Sunken and hollow Grey skin and a frame so skeletal that it seemed as though the person was held upright by the force of their worn suit binding them together. The figure was holding out a rolled poster. Crane could feel the intense gaze of the figure as they unrolled the soft black vellum rectangle. Crane stole a glance at the figure and could have sworn that the figures eyes were black flames tipped with gold threatening to burn away the figures Grey skin. But in another glance the figure merely had very dark eyes that stared intently at Crane urging Crane to address the poster.
The poster was calling for performers for a play with the tagline "Transcend your life become part of the magic." Crane would have scoffed and thrust it back to the figure but their intense unblinking gaze bade crane to take a closer look at the play. The edges of the paper were decorated with elegant gold and red fillagries. There was a strange jackal mask whose eyes burned with the same black flames rimmed with gold. But most curious and concerning of it all was that interested parties were to contact a Professor Crane C. Grayham for auditions.
"No this is most certainly not me. It must be someone trying to use my name to drum up hubbub as they know that this is exactly the type of thing i would not endorse.thank you for bringing g this up I will look into it and put a stop to it." Crane made to roll up the poster and tuck it away before they felt a bony clamping hand curl around their arm. The figure gripped onto them with a vicious ferocity as though crane were the last life line tossed to a drowning man. The figure drew crane back around such that Crane had to face the discomfort of looking at the mangled figure. The figures voice resembled Crane's own if crane was trying to speak through a filling throat of blood.
"Do not put on the play. You will not win. The only way to win is to stop now, walk away. Do not give it power." As crane subconsciously leaned in and tried to look anywhere but the figures intense unwavering gaze. They noticed the strange features of the figure the jagged cut in the lip right where crane would get theirs after a a few dry weeks. The one tooth that was smaller and off kilter from the others just as crane had in their own mouth. And even the faded blue pocket square that resembled cranes own albeit unraveling with hols around the familiar embroidered initials. The figure choked on their words with blood pouring out of their open mouth and between their teeth. Soon the figure was melting away into more and more blood that was puddling on the floor and seeping into Crane's sleeve. The last remaining portion was the gripping clutching hand whose touch lingered in the mind long after the hand itself liquefied and dripped into the fabric of Cranes coat.
Crane stumbled back with their one clean arm desperately propping them up against the enamel of the lectern. Crane stared in stunned silence as the blood dripped off of their sleeve. But before they could get their wits back and call for help. Both their sleeve and the puddle on the floor slowly caught fire with the same black flames tipped with gold as had been in the poster. Brilliant shadows danced around the flames and soon like a horrifying candle of blood and black flame the figure was all gone leaving no trace of their existence beyond the searing tickling pain on cranes arm and the lingering intensity of an emphatic desperate grip.
The moments of desperate hollow silence stretched in for an eternity before crane collapsed behind the lectern. Their legs no longer holding them up on the smooth stone floor. When crane was able to move again they fumbled in their coat pocket for a small handful of bioluminiscent blue capsules of glowing liquid that they desperately and shakily swallowed with a swig from their water flask.
Crane leaned heavily on The door to their office. Letting it fly open unexpectedly as they stumbled into the room and collapsed into a large black leather chair behind their desk. The door scurried back into place with some disgruntled chirping as the beastie settled back into its usual grooves and crane made some noncommittal exhausted grunts in response.
After a little bit of sitting slumped in their seat simply letting the large leather chair prop them up off the floor not deigning to move and just trying to get the world to stop. They turned toward the desk by shuffling their feet in an attempt to use as little energy as possible. The stacks of letters and homework on the desk seemed positively insurmountable from their perspective slumped in the chair with an uncomfortable crick in their neck. With great protest and much swearing they heaved themself upright Into their chair. And gazed at the piles of work. Their hands quivered from the effort. Slowly they grabbed an essay from the top of their grading stack and started to read: hunched over the document like a starving man protects his meals, crane read. Every once in a while Crane would make a note, with their pen. A hasty shaky scrawl mentioning the paper's lack of supporting evidence or awkward phrasing. As the tallow candles burned low and the stack of graded but unsatisfactory papers grew. Crane's tremors grew more severe. At times they would shake their entire arm with violent spasms. Crane's heart pounded in their ears. An incessant pounding that pulsed with the haziness and flickers of the light. At some point their head dropped to the desk blowing out the candle, and leaving them in the darkness where the only sound was the subtle scuttling and groaning of the room. Their body took no breaths of sleep and they did not stir again.
That is all I have for now so thank you shadowy wanderers of the night and I hope you have a wonderful evening.
“Can you set it up there next to the, like – top of the fireplace?”
“Mantle?” Tom says, hanging up the hook with a drill into the wall, then looping the cable loosely around it. He takes a step back, pulling the cable a bit, and then hooks it into Greg’s weird little machine that… shows nothing but gorgeous static. “Remind me again why I’m doing this?”
Tom snorts and turns around, spinning the drill around by the handle. “Do you actually think that, bud?”
Greg nods across the room, propping up his multi-thousand-dollar equipment on a ten-dollar plastic table. “Like, yeah. It’s a lot of investment for a thing you don’t even believe in.”
“I don’t believe in the ghosts, Greg,” Tom says, walking over and setting the drill on the table. He takes a few seconds just to watch Greg chew at his lip, eyes fixed on the screen in front of him, and brows twitching and furrowing with every next line of gobbledygook. “…But the value of the content is undeniable.”
“At least, it’s getting out there, I guess,” Greg says, looking up with a low laugh and a smile, as he lets go of his abused lip. “And you’re around, so maybe you’ll catch on?”
Tom scoffs lowly, “I just worry too much for your state of mind already to leave you in places like this by yourself.”
“Hah, yeah,” Greg says, wincing, then straightening up from the computer with a drag of his fingers awkwardly down his chin. “Like the first videos.”
“Indeed,” Tom says, dragging his eyes away from Greg, sucking at his teeth while peering into the moldy corners with a dubious slant forming across his mouth. “So, what’s the history of this place – serial killer, lovers quarrel, run of the mill axe murder?”
“Nothing in the media, really?” Greg says, picking up the drill and another motion camera, a voice monitor, to wedge up against the broad single-pane window that dominates the room. “I couldn’t find anything at the library, or online, or like even cold calling, but it’s got a history of like squatters, you know, trying to stay here and then being run out by something they can’t describe? Or, I guess, are embarrassed to?”
“Right,” Tom says, wandering around the wall to peek into the narrow galley kitchen that lies hidden behind the wall. “It’s a shithole, but definitely one of the better ones you’ve found to get out of an accommodation charge.”
Greg huffs through his nose. “Yeah, it’s… uh. Weird. It hasn’t been regularly inhabited since like 1925?”
Tom furrows his brow slightly, then moves further down the wall to look in the bedroom. It’s in the same shape as the rest of the little craftsman home – dilapidated, but not… unliveable, really; it even has an intact bed and a door still hanging for its closet. He wonders if someone might have been pulling Greg’s chain, just a bit, to get on the show.
“Hey, um, I’m still trying to – to like get this to work,” Greg says, turning back to the screens with a quick glance from Tom, down to the screens, then back up again. “Could you maybe, put some cables and a switch up in there for another couple cameras?”
“I think you’re confused how this works,” Tom says, turning around, only to feel a damnably familiar crawling sensation across the back of his neck that makes him reflexively slap it away. “I hate these places,” he says, looking around the floor and catching a small dot of movement. He strides forward to stomp, flattening it. “Fuck.”
Greg makes a small noise at the table. “You like didn’t have to kill it.”
Tom pulls his boot back, then feels his mouth twist, as he reaches for a pile of cables from the table. “I didn’t, apparently. Watch out for a recluse.”
“We’re at its house, Tom,” Greg mutters, double clicking at something on the laptop, his nose a bit too close to it and probably doing nothing better for him than bringing about a future prescription.
“It’s a spider,” Tom says, as he picks up the drill, waving it over his shoulder. “Too bad the camera isn’t out, you could’ve used that for a reel – self-aware spider evades nameless benefactor before it bites him.”
“You don’t like being on reels, I thought,” Greg says, looking up from the screen with a wide blink. “Do you want to be on a reel?”
“Fuck no, thanks,” Tom says, shaking his head once, solidly, and loosening Velcro with his thumb while crossing the threshold into the room. “I’d be fired from my job.”
“You – uh, you kind of hate it?” Greg says, voice lifting, as Tom goes further into the room, as if the paper thin walls and something like 800sqft would call for it.
“That’s not the point,” Tom says, lifting his hand and cupping a hook in his palm, as he tilts his head, looking for a good spot on the wall. “I need money for this mid-life crisis I’m in the middle of.”
It’s more Greg himself than the Youtube channel, but the less anyone acknowledges that the better.
If someone had told Tom a year and a half ago that he’d pick up a big nut and give him thousands of dollars for hunting ghosts, he’d kindly ask them to get their head checked; as it is, he’s always been the sort to attempt to strike up a conversation with a stressed-looking stranger in a coffee shop, and it’s very much bitten him in the ass.
He finishes clipping all the cables into the two cameras, hooking the other end to the little switch, then hears a stumble in the other room. He glances at the door, but the setting sun doesn’t quite reach the jamb, so he can’t see much, and he reaches out for the drill while pushing himself up from the dirt-strewn floorboards with a rub at the back of his neck.
“To-Tom?!” Greg calls, gasping and panicked, followed by another dragging stumble of feet. “There’s a – ”
An undeniable crash sounds in the other room, like breaking glass and crumpling equipment.
Tom crosses the room in a rush, taking some of the quickest three steps of his life. Fuck, if that’s some angry squatter, he’s –
Greg looks up with a blink, two fingers raised mid-click on the trackpad of the laptop.
Tom feels his grip tighten on the drill, shifting his jaw with a glance across the room, only different from last he saw it in that it’s a bit darker. “…We should order food,” he says, clearing his throat, setting the drill down with a wave of his other hand at the big window. “Eat it on that condemned little front porch.”
“Sure,” Greg says, a smile spreading across his face, as he looks over his shoulder in the same direction. He reaches out for a cable hooked to his setup, waving the end of the connector with an eager pair of raised brows. “Can you, uh, hook this into the switch, first?”
Tom takes the cable with a shallow sigh, peeling the Velcro from the loop with a shake of his head. He briefly glances around the room, again, before he goes into the bedroom. “You should’ve let me buy those wireless ones.”
“You can’t trust them,” Greg says, as he always does, mouth set somewhat comically when Tom re-enters the sitting room.
Tom gestures at the cables sprawling all around them in a misshapen web. “A bunch of little boxes and trip hazards is better?”
Greg bobs his head back and forth, a smirk peeking the edge of his mouth. He looks down at the screen with a shrug. “Yeah?”
“You get it running? Or do I need busy myself to go set up more of your stuff?”
Greg gestures at the laptop to show that it has all the cameras streaming on it, including the ones Tom just hooked up. “It’s kind of yours, too.”
“No, 65% of the revenue is mine,” Tom says, leaning forward to curl his nose with a little poke at the sitting room ones showing them from three angles. “This is all you, Mister Crowley. Did you set up the audio, already?”
“Yeah,” Greg says, reaching up and scratching his hand through his hair, as he points with the other at the little levels bumping colors on the edge of the taskbar. “I’m going to, uh – to leave it going while we eat.”
“I’m sure it’ll make all the difference,” Tom says, opening the front door and gesturing for Greg to proceed with a turn of his hand.
“It might,” Greg insists, slumping down with a mild thump to sit on the edge of the split planks that unevenly make up the porch. “Can we get like fettuccini?”
“You can get that,” Tom says, pulling out his phone and searching for the nearest vaguely Italian venue. It sucks big silverback gorilla balls, but he’s come to accept he’s lost anything like a decent palate after traveling so often into the sticks with Greg to film empty houses. “I’ll probably be getting grown up food. Like pizza.”
Greg shrugs up to his ears with a scoff, wrapping his arms around his knees and slumping into them. “Maybe, like… a liter of root beer, too?”
“Oh, branching out?” Tom taunts, bringing the phone up to his ear, as it starts to ring through the speaker.
The delivery driver arrives something like the longest half an hour later, slowly stepping out of the car, then reaching in after himself to grab a pizza bag and a plastic one out of his car. He approaches sluggishly, revealing he’s labeled Andrew in a pin across his shirt, and absolutely nothing about him seems to want to be here. “Uh,” he says, looking at his phone with a quirk of a brow. “Is one of you Whambuh – ?”
“Wambsgans,” Tom interrupts, stepping off the porch and taking the plastic bag, handing it off to Greg, then handing over his card at the same time to trade for the pizza, as the box is pulled from its bag. “Like bomb.”
“Oh, hah,” Andrew says, dropping his head with a slow pair of nods. He sticks Tom’s card into an attachment on his phone with a drop of his head. “I thought I had the address wrong.”
“You did?” Greg says, bag crumpling in his hands when he looks up from it with a somewhat predictable earnest curiosity. “Do you – uh, you know a lot about this particular residence?”
“Man, not really,” Andrew says, smiling blandly and shaking his head, as he shoves the credit card reader back into his hoodie pocket with a sluggish roll of his shoulders. “It’s pretty creepy, I guess. It’s, like… one of those places people get dared to go in sometimes, but… just don’t.”
“Oh,” Greg says, as his smile gets a little forced at the edges.
Tom scoffs quietly, rolling his eyes to the nearly endless field on the side of the property. Obviously, it is creepy.
“Have a nice dinner,” Andrew says, offering a loose pair of fingers against his forehead in a salute. He turns around with a deep breath, looking back at the house a bit with an admittedly odd pinch just before he gets into the car.
“Um, I, uh – be right back,” Greg says, setting his food aside on the plank. He all of a sudden bounds off the porch toward the delivery car, just as it sputters to life.
Tom pulls one of his legs in and cants against the edge of the steps, catching Greg nodding at something Andrew is saying, now back outside of the car, then ducking his head while he laughs and sweeps a hand coyly through his hair. Tom watches for a few seconds longer, until Greg reaches out and swats at the guy, or something, then feels his jaw tighten, leaning back against the post, and tries to ignore the roil of discontent in his gut.
He opens the pizza box with a shake of his head, forcing himself to grab a piece. It doesn’t look bad, or too greasy, and he’s hungry as hell, is the worst part, but that doesn’t make it taste any better when he takes the first bite.
“Is it like good?” Greg asks, coming from the side of the house, as the car backs quickly out of the drive.
“A roadkill burrito would be good after the last ten hours of shitty travel,” Tom says, staring at the unevenly paved road in front of them, biting back a slew of questions he has no right to with a few more stiff chews – what was that about; did you seriously chase down the delivery boy for his number; is that really the kind of person you’re into?
“Hah, maybe,” Greg says, opening the container with a pop to reveal his usual fettuccine order, which is basically buttered noodles, because his delicate body can’t handle real cream without generous applications of Lactaid. “I think you can get one some places? They’re probably okay.”
“Maybe we’ll find out, one day,” Tom says, dryly, as he reaches for the bag and pulls out the root beer.
Greg huffs around his plastic fork, splaying his knee to the side to nudge up against Tom’s thigh.
Tom watches the sun set, slow, until the smears of red are gone and dull twilight dominates in the clear sky. It’s chillier, too, but not by a lot; this sleepless night will at least be more habitable than some.
Greg throws the trash into the bag, gathering container and bottle alike, then stands with a stretching reach to touch at the roof of the porch. He looks down at the pizza, still mostly full, and flops the box closed with his toe. “Lunch tomorrow?”
“You can pick the olives off,” Tom says, wiping at the edge of his mouth with his thumb. He stands up, too, as Greg wanders off to the van to throw the leftovers in the back.
The house is drafty and a bit musty, as they always are, when they re-enter it. It’s like they become somehow more squalid whenever the sun is down, especially on a night like this, when it seems more preferable to stay outside. Greg wanders over to the desk, mumbling, as Tom pulls out his phone and leans next to a swath of torn wallpaper. He presses his tongue against his teeth while swiping at emails – work, work, and work, then Shiv, which is just kind of complaining about work, then more work; he types out a reply to a single competent question about the budget constrains of the Grand Rapids expansion, then moves on to remind Shiv that she chooses who she works with in any given election.
Greg shifts in his chair with a wide glance above the monitors, suddenly harried, then when he speaks, his voice is far too loud for no reason. “Tom?”
Tom offers a sarcastic two-note whistle. “Right here,”
“Oh, hey,” Greg says, looking over with a faltering laugh and a rapid double-blink. “There you are… uh, you ready to start?”
Tom quirks a brow, opening his arms in a shrug; he hasn’t barely moved in maybe ten minutes.
“Cool,” Greg says, then slowly his brows raise with an evident signal.
“Jesus wept,” Tom says, pushing off of the wall with a gust of a sigh. He reaches toward the table and picks up the little recorder that Greg assigned him one of many trips ago; he wags it, as he turns it on, a pair of blips of feedback going up. “Action.”
The procedure around Greg’s method of ghost hunting isn’t exactly a rush of excitement. He likes to sit down, then watch and listen, which is terribly boring, but views are starting to pick up on it on the channel, anyway, as people claim to think it makes him more scientific and therefore more reliable. The main defense Greg has for it is that hauntings are never discovered by people who’re trying to talk to ghosts, so there’s not any proof ghosts are trying to talk to them, and it’s more productive to watch and listen.
It goes straight against Tom’s beliefs that it’s all in everyone’s heads, but since he watched Greg’s first accidentally Blair Witch-like video in that café, he’s been biased in a way he suspects quite a few of the viewers actually are, as well: Greg is very cute when he’s excited. Tom also makes him put together a history of the place, then slap that in for half a video, since he does mountains of research anyway, because while Tom only has his name legally attached, not publicly, he needs some basis of legitimacy for his investment beyond Greg’s winsome smile.
It’s most of it, granted, and a large part of why he’s emptying his PTO to drive around flyover states and take the occasional trip to a southeastern swamp when he has no business doing it. He’s shocked Greg hasn’t called him out on it since the first couple trips, but then… Tom wasn’t too polite, at the time, about insisting he’s got to be around to protect the investment.
Tom enters the kitchen and looks up from the blips and beeps of the recorder, catching movement from his eye, and swallows hard at the sight of Greg across the small room at the back door. He is… He’s with the delivery driver, Andrew, curled around him with a hand big across his face while they kiss in the threshold; they break apart, but don’t look over at Tom, and Greg is smiling so hard while the driver laughs up at him, too, plainly just happy to see each other.
Tom takes a tight breath, something rising angry and hurt from the middle of his chest.
“Tom?” Greg whispers, from behind him, at the table where he’s been sitting all night staring into his screens and listening for his noises. He’s not at the door anymore and he’s definitely not seeing any of this, because he would’ve crowed victory a thousand times over – it’s still just an empty house to him.
Tom swallows hard and lifts a hand to rub at his chin. He’s going nuts, apparently; can only one person go crazy from mold? “Yeah?”
Greg blinks back widely with a wince, face glowing against the screens, as he furrows his brow, then looks back to the laptop with a solid shake of his head. “I, uh – ” He angles a headphone from his ears. “Is this place like darker than normal?”
“Than the other condemned houses?” Tom asks, dutifully glancing down at a rapid double blink on the dumb little thing in his hand, but it’s not… It’s been more active in his own living room. “That’s probably you staring at screens all night, bud.”
“Like, yeah,” Greg says, nodding shallow and scratching at the back of his neck. He pulls the earphone back in place. “Maybe.”
Tom drops his chin, forcing a wry smile Greg can’t even see. He warily peeks back to the kitchen, but it’s dark and empty, no figures standing against the moonlight at the other end. The door isn’t even open.
He takes a step back, walking himself across the small room while pretending to care about his little beeper. He can go across the kitchen, later; it’s not as if it will make any sort of difference at all. His purpose on these trips is money and company, unofficially, no matter what tool Greg shoves in his hand to keep him busy like a bored kindergartener. It wouldn’t even if he did believe in this – he can’t even remember what the thing in his hands does, really; is it an audio recorder, or a sensor, or some kind of box with an LED created just to make him think he’s busy?
He loops a few times dutifully around the little house, along the bedroom walls, into the tiny bathroom with its claw foot tub and pedestal sink. It’s a cute place, if musty, but altogether not great for wasting time. The last place had been an enormous Greek revival – that he could wander for hours.
And did.
Tom crosses in front of Greg, again, frowning slightly when it doesn’t even warrant a glance up. He peeks around, but it doesn’t seem darker to him, and continues forward to glance at the dull light of the static machine on the mantle; ah, yep… still static.
He approaches the wall separating the kitchen warily, hand tightening on the recorder, but his worry is for nothing; it’s just dark. He shakes his head, deciding to blame the whole… mood, and turns around on a heel. He takes a few steps forward to repeat his circuit, only to come to a complete stop when a shadow suddenly shifts solid and into his father.
He stares for a pair of beats, looking down at the monitor, then back up; it’s just doing the same blips. It’s… not that any of it is real, but it would be nice if it did anything at all.
“Hey, Tommy,” his dad says, taking a step forward in a distinctly stiff manner, foot falling to the floor with a thwack, then the other following just as heavy. He groans, looking down, “Son, I – ” He abruptly flails, as flames crackle up from the soles of his feet. He begins to cry in a throaty voice, sobbing in pain and collapsing in front of Tom while flames crawl up his body. “Tommy!”
Tom flinches out of his shock and stumbles backward, over a bundle of cables, and into the wall. He covers his face, swearing he can feel the heat against his forearms and thighs, and wonders what the fuck he’s seeing, aside for the obvious, only to recognize with a choke it’s from a movie he’d been begged to watch last week, so did so despite the personal chances of a nightmare.
“Tom?” Greg calls, in a burst of worry.
Tom barely manages to swallow back a hysterical cackle. “You know how sometimes I say you’ll never see anything because you want to so bad?”
“Uh,” Greg intones, fumbling audibly out of the folding chair to his feet. “Yeah – Wait, why?”
“It might be happening,” Tom admits, tightly, keeping his eyes covered, though it doesn’t do a lot to hide the crackling of the fire and wordless whimpers. It is getting pretty obvious that the longer he’s in here, the worse it is going to get, but he – He’s a big fucking pussy, isn’t he? He doesn’t know where the door is and he really, really doesn’t want to open his eyes.
“It is!?” Greg says, abruptly grabbing at Tom’s shoulders and far too ecstatic for the circumstance. “Wha-What do you see?”
“Stupid shit, bud,” Tom says, exhaling a shallow breath; he peeks his eyes open and now sees crawling little black shapes across his legs and feet. No. Fuck that six ways to Sunday.
Greg goes quiet for a beat, as his hands fall and squeeze at Tom’s forearms. “Like what?”
Tom exhales a pitching laugh that scratches up his throat. “People I care about maybe kicking the bucket in impossible ways from a movie I really shouldn’t have let you make me watch.”
“Are you –” Greg squeezes, then slowly starts to pull at Tom’s arm, plainly trying to peel him away the wall. “So… wait, when you say you don’t like horror, y-you’re really scared of it?”
“Yes, Greg,” Tom says, tight through his teeth, as he stumbles forward.
“Sorry,” Greg says, as they begin to take steps in some direction. He gets them to the front door that creaks, and a waft of warmer air follows, as the planks shift at first step onto the porch.
“It’s fine,” Tom says, something loosening in his mind when his feet hit the dirt. “Because it is not real.”
Greg mutters something lowly, almost humming it, and then they’re on the flatter, packed earth of the driveway.
Tom briefly peeks over his hand, gradually letting it drop, then stumbles, and eventually he falls into a humiliated heap next to the tire of the van. His breath starts coming too fast, fingers and toes tingling, and he finds his head stuffed back into his hands for entirely different reasons than trivial mirages.
“Tom, hey,” Greg says, gently touching him along the shoulder, then heavier, until eventually he’s next to Tom on the ground and holding him tight around his hunched back. He doesn’t seem to know what to do, making his own distressed noises, but he’s not doing that bad a job, really, even with the lack of confidence.
“Wh-what did you see?”
Tom opens his mouth, but then he remembers the Greg parts of it, those fears less general than horror movies, and he swallows the words back hard. “I… I don’t want to talk about it, thanks.”
Greg sighs at length, rubbing his face against Tom’s shoulder with a weedy mumble. “Sorry about the movie.”
“It was good, bud,” Tom says, scrubbing at his face, feeling more anchored and all the more embarrassed for it. He waits for Greg to mock him, call him a pussy and a hypocrite, but he knows that Greg won’t and wouldn’t, probably not even if Tom goaded him into it. “I didn’t even have nightmares of it, or anything, but I guess it was back there waiting to fuck me up.”
Greg hums and sucks at his teeth, arms shifting across Tom’s back. “So do you think, uh… the house is like cursed?”
“You going back in?” Tom mutters, instead of giving Greg the satisfaction of an answer – that’s something he really doesn’twant to talk about at all. He’s gotten used to the idea, sure, being around Greg and his unwavering belief in the make-believe, like some Mulder for pseudo-historical YouTube videos that are mostly voiceovers and spooky footage, but… Tom is not facing any reality of it.
Mold. He’s just been poisoned by bad air and anxiety and violent movies.
“I kind of want to,” Greg says, exhaling hard into Tom’s shoulder with a vacillating, somewhat sullen hum. “I want to see something.”
“You could call that delivery boy,” Tom says, lowly, then immediately bites into the edge of his own hand, folded under his head. Why not? Why not make the night more of a nightmare? He’s all primed for it.
Greg grunts an evident confusion.
“Come on, you got his number, didn’t you?” Tom says, feeling his voice lift in pitch, as it becomes more difficult to force the words from his throat. “Who knows? Maybe he’ll love your little hobby – a real Ed to your Lorraine.”
“What, wh-why would I – ? No,” Greg says, voice pitching up high, then suddenly choking on a sputter. “I was just – It-it was weed? I got weed, Tom.”
Tom blinks hard into his knees, then peeks up over his arm with a weak sneer.
Greg shakes his head, leaning to the side and digging into his pocket, pulling out a baggy of something that looks to be 90% stems and seeds even in the dark. “See? I – I don’t – I’m not like into anyone else – anyone, I mean.”
“How did you know he had any?” Tom asks, squinting in disbelief at the dim shadow of the baggy. “He didn’t smell like it, did he?”
Greg shrugs while he stuffs it back into his jeans. “Not really, it’s… I dunno, a vibe, as they say?”
“That is an…” Tom shakes his head, letting it fall against Greg’s arm with a groan. “Incredibly useless knack.”
Greg takes a shallow breath, bending his knees and turning until they lean with solid weight onto Tom. “I only want to do this with you, Tom,” he says, under his breath, as if anyone else might be around to hear him. “Even if – wh-when maybe you get bored, I won’t find anyone else, or anything.”
Tom blinks at a dim light winking from some far off farm along the road. “You were doing it before.”
“By myself, though,” Greg says, his hand briefly turning palm up to nudge at Tom’s thigh, then retreating back to his own lap. “It’s different. Y-you get me. I, uh – I have trouble clicking with people.”
Tom scoffs under his breath. “I think it needs to be more instant than a couple of months for it to count as clicking.”
He hadn’t been very nice at all in the beginning, is the thing, so he’s not sure why Greg’s so substantially weighing his regard. He has wanted Greg all to himself almost since he met him, and for a while he wasn’t really great about handling it or that feeling in himself, so mostly he bullied him in the same breath as buying him.
“It was,” Greg says, hunching in even closer and setting his head in top of Tom’s with a hesitating nod of his head. “It was just harder to tell at first. But you, like… Huh.”
Tom swallows hard, as he feels Greg tense against the length of his side. “What?”
“I kept…” Greg sucks loudly on his teeth. “Uh, thinking you weren’t there.”
“Where?” Tom asks, then frowns when Greg begins to move away, sitting up and arm pulling from around Tom’s shoulders.
“Like, in-in the house? It didn’t seem that significant, but…” Greg runs a hand through his hair and scratches at the back of his head. “Look, I – I have to tell you something, Tom, and you can be mad, if you want, like I – I’ll get it? It’s like a really big thing that – ” He exhales a shallow sigh, retreating from leaning at all on Tom and more against the side of the van. “I mean, it doesn’t mean anything; like, you might think it does, but it doesn’t? I – I do need you, Tom.”
Tom furrows his brows, glancing to the house, then back to Greg, who’s leaving him fucking cold – is this where he goes poof? “Not filling me with a lot of confidence.”
“My grandpa is Ewan Roy,” Greg says, quickly, so low under his breath to the point it’s nearly inaudible.
“And who is – ” Tom pauses, wetting his lips as the name connects, then taking a lengthy, disbelieving breath that culminates in a weak laugh. “Logan Roy’s brother – my boss’ brother?”
Greg nods weakly, curling harder into the elbow halfway around his head.
“The public feuder from o’er the border?” Tom says, watching Greg curl tighter into himself, but not really understanding why. “The uncle of my ex?”
“Your ex?” Greg repeats, now plainly stunned himself, then his nose curls and his mouth pinches pale in the moonlight with a remarkably unpleasant face. “…Roman?”
“Shiv,” Tom corrects, suddenly offended and incredulous, feeling his own face twist up with a reluctant laugh. “What do you mean Roman?”
“Well, y-you know,” Greg says, shoulders relaxing, and it’s proof positive that he’s telling the truth – though, why lie about this – when he’s got the seeming inborn reflex to be put off by such notions of Roman Roy.
“No, I do not, ew, but… the hostel? The flip phone in 2018?” Tom says, exhaling a scoff, getting a little frustrated for Greg a few years late. He had when they met, too, but finding out his family is billionaires and had let him get to that point, especially since Greg is perfectly shrewd when given somedirection, is different than dealing with a somewhat strung out, exasperated mom up in Ontario. “Did you get kicked out of the family?”
“I’m not like disinherited, or anything, but…” Greg glances, with some significance, toward the mold-infested craftsman hellhole looming dark next to them. “My grandpa calls me charlatan.”
Tom lets his head knock back against the rear panel with a scoff. “Yeah, that lines up.”
“You’re not mad?” Greg asks, quietly, still tense and awaiting some unspecified judgment to be passed upon him. It almost sounds like he was worried that Tom might… leave him high and dry, if he knew about it.
“Do I seem like I am?” Tom asks, because he’s relieved, more than anything – half because he’s been given a distraction from the fact he had some kind of episode, and half because Greg, tight lipped unless it’s related to baloney, has decided to bestow Tom with a few puzzle pieces to the jigsaw of his life before they met. “Not happy you obfuscated, no, but I know you didn’t hustle me – it’s obvious no family like that was helping you out. I’m not leaving you in Indiana to hitchhike home, because you’re taking my money instead of groveling to the modern answer to Billy Hearst.”
Greg shrugs with a brief scrub of a hand against his own thigh. “No one would help me out with this, anyway, Tom. It’s not like a – uh, a real job.”
“Better than some others,” Tom mutters, exhaling harsh through his nose, then raising his voice with a clear of his throat. “A lot of others. You’re up to a couple grand a video these days.”
Greg stares for a few beats, his eyes glinting and round against the bright moonlight. “I… I wouldn’t be, though, Tom.”
“Maybe not, but…” Tom turns his hand, letting it drop and fall to rest against the back of Greg’s on his leg. “You are.”
Greg wets his lips, then looks up, as his brow furrows to go with a suddenly severe look. “Can I ask… Why did you, uh – break up with Shiv?”
Tom stares back for a few beats, as he drags his teeth sharply along the inside of his lip. “We had wildly different approaches to the idea.” He winces, a little, recalling the… arguments thrown back and forth from the both of them when that revelation surfaced. “It broke off when I was in Hong Kong. We’re better off as friends, really.”
“Oh,” Greg intones, nodding and looking down, pulling both his hands in to fidget at his knees.
“Not sure that’s the case with… other people, though,” Tom says, tentatively lifting the hand that had previously been pressed to Greg’s and patting across the messy hair on the back of Greg’s head where he’s been rubbing at it. It’s soft and fine against his dry fingers, resistant to being straightened in any artless strokes backward. “I think that maybe you get me, too, Greg. Too well.”
“So, like…” Greg curls himself up to slump heavier on Tom, using his big baby-doll eyes to an entirely different pout effect. “You do believe the house is cursed?”
“No. It was a… mold-induced panic attack. But I’m not going back in there even when the sun comes up, bud,” Tom says, tucking Greg in closer to his side and still sweeping his fingers through his hair, getting ready to take the most uncomfortable nap since a summer camp in 1991. It’s much better even than that, though, since the only company he had was a flat pillow and a spider egg sac that he’d discover he’d rolled over the next morning. “You can put all your crap out on the porch and I’ll bring it to the van.”
